Royal Pain (His Royal Hotness 1)

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuuuuu­uuuuu­uuuuck.

If even half of what’s in this dossier is to be believed, the DPL are maniacs. More, they’re monsters—completely without conscience or loyalty to anyone but their own small group. They say their mission is to overthrow the monarchy, but from where I’m sitting it looks like mayhem and murder is more their vibe, à la Gotham City under the Joker’s command.

Their ideas are absurd, their violence unconscionable.

And these are the people who have Garrett?

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop thinking about them kidnapping my twin. Can’t stop thinking about what they’ve done to him—or what they might be doing to him right now while I sit here, safe and whole.

For the first time since this nightmare began, I pray that Garrett is dead. Because if he isn’t, if he’s been in the clutches of these madmen for ninety-three days, I can’t begin to imagine the agony that he’s suffered. Any more than I can imagine him being sane if, by some miracle, he’s still alive and we somehow manage to find him and bring him home.

Fuuuuuuuuck!

I slam my laptop down, barely resist the urge to send it sailing against the nearest wall. Then head for the door with my brain racing and my heart beating way too fast.

I don’t know where I’m going when I crash through the doors into the hallway. Don’t know what I’m looking for or who I want to talk to or what I expect to find. All I do know as I start down the long hallway is that I can’t spend one more second reading about the DPL. Can’t spend one more moment thinking about what they might be doing to Garrett—to my brother—at this very moment, while I’m sitting here safe in this damn palace, fielding texts from supermodels and drinking the best tequila money can buy.

I may not have a destination in mind as I wander the halls—but when I find myself in front of the doors to Garrett’s suite a few minutes later, I’m not surprised, either. And when I push those doors open, when I step inside a sitting room that looks nothing—and everything—like my own, I think maybe that I’d been heading here all along.

I haven’t been in here since the day Garrett disappeared, when I was called off that damn yacht and flown home in a Royal Air Corps helicopter. I came straight here after we landed on the helipad, hoping—praying—that this was all some sick joke. That my brother was safe in his suite, waiting to have a huge laugh at my expense.

It was a ridiculous idea, thinking I’d find him in here that day. Just like it’s a ridiculous idea for me to be here now, looking for God only knows what. The royal guards, the police and numerous Wildemar intelligence agencies have all been through this room with a fine-tooth comb looking for evidence. If there was anything to find here, they would have found it months ago.

Still, I can’t force myself to turn around and walk out. Not when this is the closest I’ve felt to my brother since this whole nightmare began.

I close my eyes, try to pretend—just for a moment—that he’s right here with me. That he’s in the bedroom changing clothes or in the small kitchen grabbing us both a beer.

It doesn’t work. I’ve spent nearly as many hours in here through the years as I have in my own suite and it’s always felt familiar. Always felt like home.

Not anymore.

Still, I can’t help winding my way through the rooms, looking for God only knows what. It’s a familiar walk—partly because of the hours I’ve spent here and partly because it’s so similar to my own suite.

Sure, the color schemes are different—Garrett’s rooms are done in warm browns and golds while mine are all cool blues and grays—but so much of the rest is the same. Same layout, same overstuffed furniture, same wall of bookshelves jammed with books.

Same bones, I think, as I walk the small study off the living room, pacing from one end of the bookshelves to the other. But the substance is different. The books on the shelves and the art on the walls—Garrett’s choices are solid, traditional,

respectable, while mine are anything but.

Kind of like the two of us, I think, as I pick up Garrett’s copy of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s one of his favorites, though you’d never know it from looking at it. My brother doesn’t believe in cracking spines or dog-earing pages or—God forbid—underlining a passage.

No, he marks key spots in other ways. With Post-it flags and bookmarks and his photographic memory (just one of the many things that drove me crazy when we were at Le Rosey together).

I flip through the book—it’s got about a dozen marked pages—and I can’t resist opening to one of them, just to see if I can figure out what Garrett likes so much about this book. But the moment I turn to the first quote, marked with a bright pink flag about halfway down the page, I feel it like a blow in my solar plexus.

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered upon the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”

I’m shaking a little as I trace a fingertip over the words, as I read them again and again and again. And wonder if he somehow knew that his life would go this way. If he knew that one day everything would be exceedingly normal—exactly as it should be—and the next he’d be at the mercy of madness.

It’s the crown prince’s job to understand that this might be his fate—more, it’s his job to accept it. And yet I find myself hoping that he didn’t have a clue, no matter what this damn book says.

Furious now, with the book, with fate, with whoever took my brother and with myself, I start to put the damn thing back where I found it. As I do, something flutters out of it. Figuring it’s a bookmark from its long, skinny shape, I bend to retrieve it. And end up with the breath knocked out of me all over again.